Forget the memory.

Tonight, from a cluttered little graveyard of regrets and remorse, I exhume a melancholy memory inlaid with semi-precious stones. 

When the dirt it has lain under for many a year has been brushed off, it gleams with warmth and wonder like a grotesque icon kept and treasured in a Russian monastery and revered by people who travel barefoot for hundreds of miles through snow and desert to kiss it before they finally expire. They kiss it with torn and bloodied lips. 

It has been claimed that this memory possesses healing properties, especially for those afflicted by emotional instability, haemorrhoids or gout, none of which I presently suffer although I have a close friend who I strongly suspect is smitten by all three. Although I doubt the efficacy of my memory’s supposed powers, of this one singular property I am certain because I have witnessed it myself on three occasions, that it can render bagpipes mute. 

No matter how much a kilted Scot huffs and puffs into his bagpipes, no matter how red his cheeks turn and how explosively the veins throb in his temples, no sound will be emitted until he is at a distance of at least five versts (measured according to the Romanov standard) from this little memory and that in itself charms me. 

And so to the bitter sweet memory itself, but with all this precious, nauseating preambling I’ve quite forgotten what it was I was remembering. It’ll come to me later.